My Mom Won't Support Me and Is Being Very Negative!

 Well heck Elizabeth, with the "research" in quotes it's a bit tough to take the question seriously but I'll bite.

I did objective research such as:
Look up his medical licenses 
ASBS status, etc.
Medline'd his research articles 

I did subjective research such as:

Going to the surgery floor and talking to the nurses
Reading patient accounts (google and oh)
Interviewing him about his experience and asking about his current research
Looking up his Kaiser responsibilities
I also talked to a DS vetted surgeon about him for shiggles (Dr. Crookes), who assured me the man was an exceptional surgeon.

I actually spent hours both online, on the phone, and at the hospital.... I have 7 children plus two others (my sister's children) who need me alive and in one piece. 

I wasn't talking to you. I was talking to the OP. Do pay attention.

This is the surgeon to see in WA:

Myur S. Srikanth, MD

Center for Weight Loss Surgery
34509 Ninth Ave S Suite 103
Federal Way, WA 98003
Phone: 253-815-7774 or 1-877-815-7774 toll free
Fax: 253-815-7708
Email: [email protected]

Kirkland Office:
12303 NE 130th Lane #400
Kirkland WA 98034

BTW, my DS did nothing to improve my fibromyalgia and improved but did not cure my sleep apnea. I am still 100% BiPAP dependent. Just went three nights without one because my machine died and the supplier was being a PITA. I was hallucinating from sleep deprivation and clearly impaired in many areas of mental function.

OTHER chronic pain problems were vastly improved, but as you know, fibro is about a lot more than just pain.

 "I was hallucinating from sleep deprivation and clearly impaired in many areas of mental function."

Does this mean we can trust anything you've said in the past few days? 
I did kinda smile when you mentioned the machine died because that would so happen to you. 

Meh. I tried to stick to subject matter I could follow on autopilot :-p. And I didn't try to drive an hour to go to class....which was just as well because flooding had caused multiple detours, as I heard later. It was really bad getting home Wednesday night. I drove around a lot of flooding spots as they were filling up.

It was pretty eerie driving like that with those damned shadow things flittering around the edges of my field of vision. Slammed on the brakes several times thinking it was a deer.

The people on this thread who are defending THEIR DECISIONS to take an extra measure of risk with an unvetted surgeon are entitled to their point of view.  But failure to acknowledge that they are basing their arguments on their POST-HOC assessment of the skill of their surgeon FAILS TO ACCOUNT for the extra risk they took.

REMINDING A NEWBIE VOCIFEROUSLY ABOUT THE EXTRA RISKS INVOLVED IN USING AN UNVETTED, NEVER-BEFORE-HEARD-OF SURGEON WHO PROCLAIMS HIMSELF TO BE COMPETENT TO DO A COMPLEX, STEEP-LEARNING-CURVE SURGERY WITHOUT ESTABLISHING ANY BONA FIDES, SUCH AS PROCTORING WITH A VETTED DS SURGEON, IS EXACTLY WHAT WE WHO PAY IT FORWARD SHOULD BE DOING!  POINTING OUT THE CONSEQUENCES WHEN SOMEONE DIDN'T LISTEN TO US IS NOT BULLYING, IT IS POINTING OUT FACTUAL EVIDENCE OF WHY WE DO THIS.

Just because YOU went to a surgeon who was not vetted, and didn't die, doesn't mean that surgeon would not have a higher overall risk of causing complications.  Even if that risk is a difference of "just" a 5% complication rate vs. a 1% complication rate, that is a 5 times higher risk and the newbies need to understand this.

Those of you who claim we are bullying, need to look at your own reasons for defending your decision to take on this excess risk - including your own convenience (not wanting to fight Kaiser to get a surgeon with more experience, for example) and/or costs - and why you are urging THIS newbie, who as far as we know HAS OTHER OPTIONS AVAILABLE TO HER, to go ahead an use a surgeon nobody has EVER heard of as having any DS competence.  You sound JUST LIKE the post-ops of non-DS surgeries who get their panties in a twist when we post messages to pre-ops telling them to not pick a surgery (or a surgeon) without fully assessing the risks and being fully informed.

I still would NEVER allow anyone I cared about to go to either Belzberg or Lalor.  NOT UNTIL THEY BECAME SUFFIENTLY EXPERIENCED AND WITH A SOLID TRACK RECORD IN THE DS, WHICH I HAVEN'T SEEN HAPPENING SINCE EITHER OF YOU HAD YOUR SURGERIES.  NEITHER OF THEM IS COMMITTED TO THE DS, AND I WOULD WANT NOTHING TO DO WITH A SURGEON WHO DOESN'T BELIEVE IN IT.

 And you are entitled to that opinion. I however, would recommend and continue to recommend Dr. Belzberg. And btw: I could have made them send me to Crookes, and the DMHC likely would have allowed it (due in part to Belzberg's small DS patient sample) so it wasn't a money issue. 
I LIKED Belzberg's multidisciplinary experience. I liked the respect he had of his peers (including vetted DS surgeons), and of all the available options I felt confident that my care would be exceptional. 
And it was. 

 And MOREOVER there is also an argument that some practices which either overextend themselves, or continue to provide the lapband and other less sound procedures which allow solvency to their bottom line, are, regardless of how "experienced" either accidents waiting to happen due to exhaustion, or are unethical in general. We all make our decisions based on what we can live with. 
I don't think I took an extra risk. I believe I made an exceptionally good and educated decision. 
I stand by that. 

This appears to me to be a spurious straw man argument.  Are you making an accusation against a specific vetted DS surgeon's practice?  Because if you are, let's hear whom you are making this accusation against.  I call bull****

A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.